Dinosaurs on Noah's ark? A MAGA theme park clings to creationism
Creationism hasn’t generated much coverage in the mainstream media over the past decade. The days when fundamentalists challenged scientists to “debates” over evolution now seem quaint in the era of Donald Trump, whose belief is that you never need to persuade when beating your opponents into submission is an option. Under the president’s leadership, the right has shifted from arguing about dinosaur bones and carbon dating to making more blunt demands for book bans and even stripping women of the right to vote.
This is not to say that evangelicals’ attachment to creationism has gone away, even if it has faded from mainstream discourse. This week, one of the most elaborate and ridiculous bits of Christian right propaganda, Kentucky’s Ark Encounter, is celebrating its 10th anniversary. Readers who might be unaware of this facility should imagine an amusement park minus the fun and whimsy.
The centerpiece of the spectacle is what purports to be a full-size replica of Noah’s Ark, complete with dinosaurs living among humans, because that’s the only way fundamentalists can justify their belief that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. The anniversary’s festivities include hellfire-and-damnation preachers, a play about prisoners of war in World War II and a speech by the guy who owns Hobby Lobby, a program that apparently passes for children’s entertainment in white evangelical circles.
At first blush, the continued existence of the Ark Encounter and its host institution, the Creation Museum is confusing. During George W. Bush’s presidency, there were repeated efforts to force public schools to teach Genesis in science classes, but after losing a 2005 federal trial that exposed how clownish creation “science” truly is, the Christian right mostly abandoned those efforts. Internal messaging aimed at evangelicals, though, has stayed strong in pushing the view that evolutionary biology is false and that God really did create the world in seven literal days. And so it is that the Ark Encounter, which was built at the tail end of Barack Obama’s administration, continues to draw hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, even as its traffic has been declining.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/dinosaurs-on-noah-s-ark-a-maga-theme-park-clings-to-creationism/ar-AA27DkTZ
If only one could gift a T Rex to Donald Trump and the Evangelists.
= new reply since forum marked as read
God does have a sense of humor, though—the pastor’s young son looooved dinosaurs.
